Slashdot Mirror

CommanderData writes "USA Today reports that US Programmers are an 'Endangered Species' and expects them to be 'extinct' within the next few years, replaced by offshoring and H-1B visa holders. They suggest people will manage overseas projects, become self-employed, or switch to other fields. What do my fellow code-dinosaurs plan to do before the asteroid hits?" A report on Newsforge (which is part of OSTG along with Slashdot) shows the flip side of the coin.

I've been interested in the Free software home-security software called ZoneMinder for a while, but strictly as a lurker, checking out the project's site whenever I noticed it crawl down the Freshmeat home page. Joe Barr of NewsForge, though, recently had reason to install the software, which manages one or more home security cameras (which can be any Linux compatible camera -- he used some common D-Link wireless ones), watches for movement (generating alarms based on user configuration), and lets the camera output be streamed elsewhere, so a thief can't usefully just rip out the recording system. (NewsForge and Slashdot are both part of OSTG.)

craigaa writes "OpenOffice.org turns four years old today. A press release on the announce list giving an overview of the project has been issued with a link to the birthday page. What have your experiences been with OpenOffice.org over the past four years? Has the project and software met your expectations? What are you expecting in the years to come?" An interview at NewsForge (also part of OSTG) poses the same kind of questions (and others) to Louis Suarez-Potts, the project's Community Manager. Suarez-Potts notes some specific ways to help the OO.org effort (especially if you are a Cocoa expert to help with the move to Aqua), and talks about the recent Sun-Microsoft agreement.

ValourX writes "By now most of you have heard of the copyright infringement and code theft claims involving the Mambo content management system and businessman Brian Connolly. Legal questions have been raised, guesses have been made, commentary has flowed forth, and everyone involved in the dispute has had their fifteen minutes to relay their sad tale of injustice. Now it is time for the facts, and NewsForge can definitively say, based on material and quotes from Larry Rosen, Dan Ravicher, and Eben Moglen, that Connolly's legal threats against innocent Mambo users are baseless. Part of the new information in this article reveals that the SCO Group helped Brian Connolly by giving him some media contacts. NewsForge is part of OSTG, like Slashdot."

ValourX writes "By now most of you have heard of the copyright infringement and code theft claims involving the Mambo content management system and businessman Brian Connolly. Legal questions have been raised, guesses have been made, commentary has flowed forth, and everyone involved in the dispute has had their fifteen minutes to relay their sad tale of injustice. Now it is time for the facts, and NewsForge can definitively say, based on material and quotes from Larry Rosen, Dan Ravicher, and Eben Moglen, that Connolly's legal threats against innocent Mambo users are baseless. Part of the new information in this article reveals that the SCO Group helped Brian Connolly by giving him some media contacts. NewsForge is part of OSTG, like Slashdot."

Avidwriter writes "Lycoris has developed into a decent desktop Linux distro but hasn't really had anything to offer on the server end. Now it's taking over the old e-smith server project, one of those that always got plenty of love but never seemed to really find a home as it bounced from one corporate sponsor to another. Will this work out? An analyst quoted in the NewsForge story about the buy has doubts, but says it might be okay."

An anonymous reader writes "Newsforge has an article about a recent dispute over code in Mambo (a Free CMS). A Mr. Connolly has sent threatening emails to Mambo users over this, a move John Weathersby of OSSI was quoted as saying 'That's ... not prudent.' The dispute is over some trivial code that checks whether a story is a lead story and if so displays it across multiple columns, as it's a modification of GPL code the Mambo team maintain it must remain GPL but Mr. Connolly claims otherwise."

rimberg writes "Richard M. Stallman has a article on NewsForge talking about ways to fight software patents. It mentions the Public Patent Foundation (and why it's a good idea), but argues that fighting patents one by one will never eliminate the danger of software patents, any more than swatting mosquitoes will eliminate malaria." (Newsforge, like Slashdot, is part of OSTG.)

ValourX writes "Microsoft's Sender ID has already been rejected by both the Debian Project and the Apache Software Foundation, but Joe Barr of NewsForge today interviewed Larry Rosen of the Open Source Initiative and discovered that there are negotiations between the two entities with regard to Sender ID's licensing. Could Microsoft be considering an Open Source license for Sender ID? Slashdot has covered other aspects of this story in the past. NewsForge is part of OSTG, like Slashdot."

ValourX writes "Microsoft's Sender ID has already been rejected by both the Debian Project and the Apache Software Foundation, but Joe Barr of NewsForge today interviewed Larry Rosen of the Open Source Initiative and discovered that there are negotiations between the two entities with regard to Sender ID's licensing. Could Microsoft be considering an Open Source license for Sender ID? Slashdot has covered other aspects of this story in the past. NewsForge is part of OSTG, like Slashdot."

Roblimo writes "Armed Forces personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan increasingly use the Internet to communicate with their familes back home, but there are not nearly enough computers and connections for them. Lt. Phillip Geiger, Medical Officer with the 3rd Battalion, 6th Marines, suggested using a privately-funded, long-range WiFi network to help troops stay in touch. The idea has grown from there, all funded privately with cash and equipment donations. Joe Barr has the details on NewsForge (which, like Slashdot, is part of OSTG)."

Joe Barr writes "There's an interesting story on NewsForge today about Unisys and its new-found love for Linux. In the story, Robin Miller interviews Unisys VP of engineering Anthony Gold and asks such delicate questions as how Unisys 'planned to make amends for its use of GIF patents against open source projects'? It's a good read, and in this day and age of software dinosaurs trying for peaceful co-existence with Linux, a very timely one."

Several large companies have recently released previously proprietary software into the open source wilds. The splashiest announcement along these lines was from CA, who opened their Ingres r3database -- and offered up to $1 million in incentives for development of Ingres migration tools. For those of you who want to earn a piece of that money, and for all of us who have questions about how and why CA is cozying up to open source developers, the person with the answers is Sam Greenblatt, Senior Vice President and Chief Architect of CA's Linux Technology Group. So ask, already. We'll send 10 of the highest-moderated questions to Sam by email, and post his answers as soon as we get them back.

5m477m4n writes "Circuit City is planing to have much of its day to day operations on Linux by 2006. Unfortunately that doesn't mean we'll be able to by a Linux PC there. IBM equipment and software, along with SUSE Linux will be used."

Roblimo writes "Yes, SCO is evil and all that, but in between lawsuits it still puts out a product called UnixWare. NewsForge decided to review the latest version -- 7.1.4 -- just like we would any other Unix-based operating system. To ensure impartiality, we hired respected freelancer Logan G. Harbaugh, who wrote: 'On the server side, UnixWare Enterprise edition is more expensive for 150 users than either Windows 2003 Server Datacenter Edition, any of the Enterprise Linux distributions, or Solaris, with fewer available applications, fewer drivers for recent HBAs and other new hardware, and no currently available 64-bit version for either Opteron or Itanium processors.'"

ValourX writes "NewsForge has a review of DragonFlyBSD 1.0A. If you recall, this was forked from FreeBSD 4.8 a little more than a year ago, and has since achieved several of its goals. According to the review it's not quite ready for prime time yet, but it looks like DragonFly is shaping up to be the ultimate BSD."

Krafty Koder writes "Over at Newsforge (Part of OSTG, Slashdot's Parent) there's an interesting article that attempts to dispells the myth that Linux isn't ready for the desktop or that Windows still beats Linux. Three myths are explored - that Linux is harder to use, difficult to install and that there's not enough apps ."

Gentu writes "Here are the first reports from the first day of LinuxWorldExpo's showfloor: NewsForge discusses a few interesting 'off-the-record' tidbits among the announced news, while OSNews offers a report, too, accompanied by a number of pictures from the Expo."

Joe Barr writes "NewsForge [ed. note: part of OSTG along with Slashdot] is running its concluding piece on the week-long Blackhat/DEFCON hackerfest in Las Vegas. Want to know how little our police/intelligence agencies seem to have learned from their failures prior to 9/11? Or how a very large goon known only as Priest prevented outright political violence at a DEFCON presentation on Civil Disobedience? Or which of the two conferences is right for you? It's all here in the Blackhat/Defcon: Final report." Reader M. Curphey writes "The Web Application Security Consortium (WASC) announced at Blackhat the release of a 'Threat Classifications' document. This document attempts to clarify web security terminology such as Cross Site Scripting, Session Fixation, Cookie poisoning, and HTTP response splitting (to name a few)."

An anonymous reader writes "The question isn't whether Linux can be certified as Unix. At least some distributions no doubt can. But who would pay for it? And is it worth the trouble? Jem Matzan asks these questions on NewsForge, and reminds us that the Open Group, not SCO, owns the Unix trademark,"

An anonymous reader writes "Reporter Jay Lyman attended the O'Reilly OSCON developers' get-together and wrote daily briefs plus a wrap-up that are all posted on NewsForge now. If you didn't make it to this excellent conference, reading Jay's reports is the next best thing." Yes, NewsForge is also part of OSTG.

Roblimo writes "Lawrence Rosen, attorney for the Open Source Initiative, doesn't seem to be as worried about software patents' effects on open source development as some Slashdot readers. In this article he says, 'Don't be too paranoid about the patent problem. It's a real problem, but not a catastrophe. Any patent owner that tries to assert its patents against open source software has many hurdles to leap before the royalty checks start to arrive.'"

Joe Barr writes "David Graham wraps up his coverage of the Ottawa Linux Symposium with this report on Day 4, including the closing keynote address by Andrew Morton. If you've been turned off by the commercialism of LWCE the past couple of years, you might find the OLS to be breath of fresh air. Our fearless reporter has provided detailed, behind-the-headlines coverage each day of the event."

madro writes "Remember 'Does IT Matter?' a while ago? Nicholas Carr is back with an editorial in today's New York Times following Microsoft's decision to dramatically reduce its cash stash. Carr's take: Microsoft is admitting it can't find better uses for its cash, due to the growing maturation of the software industry. No mention of open source, although Apple's consumer-targeted model of free iTunes driving iPod demand is one listed alternative." Reader CodeArtisan submits another piece about Microsoft's loot distribution, and Newsforge (which is part of OSDN along with Slashdot) has a story about the future of commodity software.

Dr.Dubious DDQ asks: "With all the recent Microsoft(r) news, I see a lot of the usual complaining about Microsoft's unfair 'embrace and extend' practices. I do my own fair share of this, but I'd much rather actually *do* something about it.At the risk of prompting cries of 'No! That will only make them stronger!', I find myself asking: How possible is it to 'transparently' replace Microsoft-brand services with other (preferably, but not necessarily, Open Source) services (rather than flatly demanding migration away from all things MS)? Or put the other way around, what tweaks would have to be made to existing, standard services to make them 'bug-for-bug compatible' with MS versions, particularly OUTSIDE of the context of SMB/Samba, which is an already-obvious example?" While there are definite reasons why such an effort may be worthwhile, it is also possible that Microsoft could attempt to make legal attacks at such projects...even though they are designed with software interoperability in mind. Precedents in support of this idea do exist, such as: ReactOS and even standard Open Source openings like Gnumeric. "I've got two goals in mind here:

1. Ability to placate MS-platform applications that demand MS-brand services to connect to while ALSO allowing non-MS clients as close to 'full' functionality as possible with the same services
2. Naturally, ability to replace an MS-branded package would personally appeal to me as well for both technical and - yes, I'll admit it - philosophical reasons.

Ways of meeting either (or both) goal would be useful to me and, I suspect, a lot of other sysadmins.

For example:

• Is it possible (and feasible) to get OpenLDAP+Kerberos5 to fool Windows systems into believing they're talking to a "real" ActiveDirectory(r) server (without necessarily also having the entire Samba stack)?
• Can client programs that demand MS-SQL server generally use MySQL in MS SQL Compatibility mode instead, if MySQL is set to respond on the MS-SQL port (either directly or via ODBC?)
• How hard would it be to make a 'mod_dav_sharepoint type of module that spoofs Microsoft's special Sharepoint WebDAV behavior (which evidently also uses a 'special' non-standard SQL-like search mechanism - am I going to be kicked out of the club for thinking this looks, at least on the surface, like it might be a useful feature if usable by non-MS clients and implementable by non-MS servers)?
• Similarly, how feasible would it be to get non-MS DAV clients to be able to use Microsoft Sharepoint (or the hypothetical MS-alike drop-in replacement?)
• How good are the 'drop-in replacements' for MS Exchange?
• Are there issues with MS's implementation of IPP (are there any problems dropping Microsoft Printer Sharing entirely and using CUPS instead? It SEEMS that MS Windows 2000+ should support IPP directly, without resorting to Samba middleware - is this true?)
• Possibly risking heaps of derision for suggesting such an unlikely-sounding thing, but how about using mod_dav/Apache (as what Microsoft USED to refer to as 'Web Folders') as a replacement for SMB file sharing? Aside from possible performance issues, is this feasible, or are there too many incompatibilities in MS's DAV support for it to work?
• Are there any registry hacks or other tweaks that can be applied to Microsoft Windows-based systems to make them behave in more standards-compliant ways?
• ...etc?...

Are there other replacements people have investigated?"

eeg3 writes "NewsForge has a review of OpenBSD 3.5. It encompasses a fair amount of information, more specifically it details security, cryptography, installation, and new features." While not afraid to point out OpenBSD's shortcomings as a desktop OS, it's still a good tour of possibly the most secure OS. NewsForge and Slashdot are both owned by OSDN.

eeg3 writes "NewsForge has a review of OpenBSD 3.5. It encompasses a fair amount of information, more specifically it details security, cryptography, installation, and new features." While not afraid to point out OpenBSD's shortcomings as a desktop OS, it's still a good tour of possibly the most secure OS. NewsForge and Slashdot are both owned by OSDN.

Roblimo writes "A two-year-old internal HP memo has just surfaced that talks about how 'Microsoft could attack Open Source Software for patent infringements against OEMs, Linux distributors, and least likely open source developers. They are specifically upset about Samba, Apache and Sendmail.' NewsForge has the story, including the memo's full text, a response from Eben Moglen (who says the memo's author misinterprets part of the GPL), and a statement from HP saying they love open source, really they do, even though 'Microsoft continues to be one of HP's strongest partners.'"

An anonymous reader writes "Let's face it. Poor user interface design is a big problem in software today, particularly in the Open Source world. A recent article on NewsForge addresses this problem from the perspective that software usability is a technical issue that Open Source developers can and should face and conquer, just as we have conquered other technical problems that have stood in our way." (Slashdot and NewsForge are both part of OSDN.)

sarig_magik asks: "It seems that Dell is testing the Linux desktop market worldwide, and their choice of desktop is Linspire 4.51. I wonder how Microsoft will view Dell, now? Could this be a real attempt to gain a foothold before any of the other distributors do? We know the hardware vendor, but can anyone comment on the choice of OS?" Although Dell is offering a system with a preloaded Linux Desktop, they aren't doing it here in the US, but through their Italian partner, Questar. While the choice of Linspire as a desktop may leave a few of you underwhelmed, this does seem to be a step in the right direction. Is Dell testing the market? Of course they are. How well do you think they will do?

treefort writes "An article at eWeek has the lowdown. The article also has a link to the bug report which addressed this issue some time ago. Still, I feel safer using Firefox since malicious persons are much more unlikely to target any vulnerabilites. Note that this only affects users of Mozilla and Firefox on Windows XP or Windows 2000." New releases are already available on mozilla.org that fix this. Update: 07/09 00:41 GMT by CN : I removed the bum link to Bugzilla, since I guess they don't like us. Also I discovered that OSDN's own NewsForge has more on the situation.

Dozix007 writes "NewsForge carries an interesting article on how spoiled Linux users are. It sites examples such as the availability of wide ranging software packages that Microsoft can't hope to provide. Microsoft has to be careful about what kind of application software it ships with Windows. Microsoft reps sometimes point to Linux distributions and ask why they can get away with shipping stacks and stacks of applications without getting in trouble. The answer to that one, of course, is that the Linux distributions give you a choice. You aren't locked into one particular application. Most Linux distributions include several choices for most program classifications; even single-CD distros usually include several Web browsers and email clients."

tcopeland writes "An article on NewsForge highlights some changes in the upcoming PostgreSQL release (v7.5) that are funded by Fujitsu. PostgreSQL core team member Josh Berkus says that "Tablespaces, Nested Transactions, and Java support" are being underwritten by Fujitsu; this has also been mentioned on the postgresql-hackers list. He also says that 7.5 will be "...the most significant new release of the software since version 7.0 almost four years ago". Good times for PostgreSQL users!" And ggoebel writes "Jeff Dike posted a notice to the UML [User-mode Linux] developers mailing list: 'The first bit of news is that as of last Monday, I am working for Intel. They generously offered a full-time position, off-site, with my time mostly spent on UML. This basically means that UML is no longer a part-time, after-hours thing for me, so we should start seeing more work happening on it, especially compared to the last month or two.'"

Roblimo writes "Not all parents want their children exposed to everything on the Internet, especially porn. So far, virtually all home-level Net filtering software has been for Windows. This tutorial on NewsForge, by Joe Bolin, shows Linux-using parents how to set up Web filtering for *their* children -- and shows them how to customize filters to fit their own tastes and beliefs instead of relying on a commercial software company's ideas of 'good' and 'bad,' too."

Joe Barr writes "NewsForge is running a review of glabels. It's still in beta status, but it's ready for prime time now. It knows hundreds of predefined label formats and allows you to design your own templates for custom work. Barcodes, images, just about anything but MP3 tracks can be printed on them. glabels is destined to become one of the most popular native apps for Linux." If you need harder-core barcode support, the excellent kbarcode would probably make a good complement. (NewsForge and Slashdot are both part of OSDN.)

martin-k writes "NewsForge has a glowing review about PlanMaker for Linux, a new spreadsheet for Linux that is much more compatible with Microsoft Excel than the competition and speedier, too. PlanMaker has Excel-compatible charting and AutoShapes and reads and writes any Excel file you throw at it. Here is a chart comparing Excel, OpenOffice.org, and PlanMaker." Yes, Virginia, NewsForge is also part of OSDN, like Slashdot.

martin-k writes "NewsForge has a glowing review about PlanMaker for Linux, a new spreadsheet for Linux that is much more compatible with Microsoft Excel than the competition and speedier, too. PlanMaker has Excel-compatible charting and AutoShapes and reads and writes any Excel file you throw at it. Here is a chart comparing Excel, OpenOffice.org, and PlanMaker." Yes, Virginia, NewsForge is also part of OSDN, like Slashdot.

Shipud writes "Newsforge has an interview with MandrakeSoft CEO François Bancilhon, and Mandrakelinux co-founders Jacques Le Marois and Gaël Duval. Among the issues discussed are a the business model for a GPL-based public company, Mandrakesoft's shares, the role of user subscription in funding, the bankruptcy, Xfree 4.4's new non-GPL license, and more."

An anonymous reader points to Roblimo's "interesting article about how the U.S. sold out to software patents and the EU should as well." Should be of interest to Europeans, forced as they are "to suffer from willy-nilly software development by individuals who have not been screened, approved, and trained by corporate human resources professionals."

Joe Barr writes "Over at Newsforge [part of OSDN, like Slashdot], there's a look at the arcade/system emulator movement and two Linux-based Live CDs designed to put you in touch with your inner Donkey Kong: KnoppixMAME and AdvanceCD. I'm happy with gameplay under both. I only wish I knew more about the legality of using them." S!: We previously covered release details on KnoppixMAME and AdvanceCD last year, and also mentioned the categorically legal, if limited StarROMs site on Slashdot Games a few weeks back.

akahige writes "Fresh from the debunking of the 'Linus couldn't possibly have written an OS without ripping someone off' book published by the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution, Tanenbaum has published an email he got from the consultant hired to do the code comparison between MINIX and Linux. Among other juicy comments, 'pay no attention to this man.' (There was no stolen code, either.) In related matters, ESR was apparently sent a pre-release excerpt of the book which he completely eviscerates with his usual zeal. Another story on NewsForge." See our previous stories if you're coming to this late.

derrickoswald writes "Today's Ottawa Citizen is running a report in the TechWeekly section on the recent open source conference in Toronto organized by U of T's interdisciplinary Knowledge Media Design Institute and last month's Real World Linux trade show. It highlights the extremely poor Extremadura region of Spain's success story using open source to bootstrap themselves technologically. Quotes from FOSS luminaries include: 'Who controls the software, controls life. Well, it had better us. That's the real political meaning of the free software movement,' said Eben Moglen. Open source 'was the default way you built Internet Infrastructure. You wrote code and released it without trying to commercialize and monetize it,' said Brian Behldendorf." Newsforge (also part of OSDN) has a series of reports on the conference: Day 1, Day 2, Day 3.

derrickoswald writes "Today's Ottawa Citizen is running a report in the TechWeekly section on the recent open source conference in Toronto organized by U of T's interdisciplinary Knowledge Media Design Institute and last month's Real World Linux trade show. It highlights the extremely poor Extremadura region of Spain's success story using open source to bootstrap themselves technologically. Quotes from FOSS luminaries include: 'Who controls the software, controls life. Well, it had better us. That's the real political meaning of the free software movement,' said Eben Moglen. Open source 'was the default way you built Internet Infrastructure. You wrote code and released it without trying to commercialize and monetize it,' said Brian Behldendorf." Newsforge (also part of OSDN) has a series of reports on the conference: Day 1, Day 2, Day 3.

derrickoswald writes "Today's Ottawa Citizen is running a report in the TechWeekly section on the recent open source conference in Toronto organized by U of T's interdisciplinary Knowledge Media Design Institute and last month's Real World Linux trade show. It highlights the extremely poor Extremadura region of Spain's success story using open source to bootstrap themselves technologically. Quotes from FOSS luminaries include: 'Who controls the software, controls life. Well, it had better us. That's the real political meaning of the free software movement,' said Eben Moglen. Open source 'was the default way you built Internet Infrastructure. You wrote code and released it without trying to commercialize and monetize it,' said Brian Behldendorf." Newsforge (also part of OSDN) has a series of reports on the conference: Day 1, Day 2, Day 3.

Slashback is back, with a boatload of updates, clarifications, and corrections to make previous Slashdot stories make more sense. This week, there are bits on BitKeeper, Microsoft's update policy when it comes to illegally copied versions of Windows, a change in schedule for an upcoming games panel, and more. Read on for the details.

The real requirements for Longhorn, at least at this juncture. Cryoknight writes "It seems that Longhorn will run on almost anything that's a P4 or better, judging by this article from C|Net News. You only need a 64mb graphics card to run the slickest version..."

(That's in contrast with earlier reports that the average Longhorn system would be hefty indeed; of course, listed minimums and recommendations are often worlds apart.)

How many bits could Mandrake chuck if Mandrake could chuck bits? Shipud writes "Speaking of AMD beating Intel, Mandrake have just released their v.10 for AMD64. Claiming to be on the average 20% faster, and compatible with 32-bit applications." As usual, it's never a good time to buy a computer.

The War Of The Word, Part II Random Guru 42 writes "Chris Pratley, whose earlier blog entry was the source of much discussion [referring to this Slashdot post of April 27], has just recently replied to everyone's feedback both here and as comments on that earlier entry."

Gentoo Community Reaches Out to Daniel Robbins nporter writes "Slashdot reported the news that Daniel Robbins has stepped down as chief architect of Gentoo Linux. It was revealed that due to his commitment to Gentoo he racked up a hefty personal debt of $20,000. The Gentoo Community is showing its appreciation to its founder in droves by placing donations to the Gentoo Store, proceeds of which will go toward paying down Robbins' debt. I count over a thousand dollars (and growing rapidly) has already been donated, just based upon posts to the forums. It's great to see Linux users coming together like this to show support for someone who has contributed so much to the Linux community."

Bitkeeper redux, redux. gosand writes "Part two of the two-part interview with Bitkeeper author Larry McVoy is up at Newsforge. (Part 1 was posted here yesterday). They essentially talk about why and how BK fits into the kernel development model. There are only two questions, one answered by Larry, and one answered by Linus. Maybe that is because BK makes them 2.5x as efficient, and they can answer everything in just one answer each. :-)"

MS Clarifies: No SP2 For Pirated XP Copies PingXao writes "Unlike earlier reports, this eWeek story says MS will not be allowing pirated versions of Windows XP to install SP2. They plan to release the update within a couple of months as everybody knows, but what's interesting is this quote from a MS spokesperson that supposedly explains their reasons for this approach: "... using genuine software is an important part of keeping systems secure and running smoothly because it means continued access to the latest security enhancements and product updates." Not that I blame them for not providing assistance to people who violate their copyrights, but I wonder if they actually paid someone to come up with that insightful explanation. Something like "We don't provide updates to pirates" would have done the trick. Why cloud the issue with talk about secure this and security that when the basis for the policy has absolutely nothing to do with security?"

Games panel at Smithsonian - update tripmaster writes "For those slashdotters that tried to get a ticket but were foiled by the smaller venue, the panel on games with Shigeru Miyamoto, Richard Garfield and Doug Church being held Sunday, May 16th at the Smithsonian in Washington DC has been moved to a bigger space. Miyamoto should be showing the same highlights of his latest game as premiered at E3. Questions from the audience will be collected and posed to the speakers -- a rare chance to ask query some of games' most visionary and influential creators."

Off again, on again. Doug Muth writes "According to this piece on Yahoo, the restraining order which was issued against SpamCop on May 10th has been dissolved by the judge who further remarked that, 'the TRO [entered May 10] was not a determination of the merits of the case.'"

gosand writes "Newsforge is running Part 1 of a two-part interview with Bitkeeper author Larry McVoy. You may recall that there was quite an uproar in the community over Linus choosing to use a proprietary source management tool. Although there are no hard numbers, the estimates are that Linus has been 10x more productive with BK."

key45 writes "Just a few days after California rejects Diebold E-Voting machines, and Ireland bans e-voting too, the Information Technology Association of America (which represents election equipment makers and other technology companies) released a poll showing that the majority of Americans trust those machines. The war for public opinion is on!" Reader theRG writes "The U.S. Election Assistance Commission held hearings on May 5 about the pros and cons of electronic voting machines. They debated whether or not machines should have paper trails, and what standards should be set. Meanwhile, NPR reports on California's recent decertification of Diebold machines and on one Ohio county's switch from punchcards to electronic voting." And finally, our own OSDN has a report from the election commission meeting: Joe Barr writes "Thom Wysong has a report at NewsForge this morning on the first public meeting of the new U.S. Election Assistance Commission. Questions like whether or not a voter verifiable audit trail and open source should be mandated for e-voting solutions were the order of the day."

Joe Barr writes "What with the spate of professionally PR-generated FUD coming out of Redmond about Linux not being open source, or Windows having a lower TCO, and - believe it or not - even a claim that Windows is more reliable, it's good to read about some real world, grass-root results of successful migrations from Windows to Linux. This story at NewsForge takes a look at the Howard County (Maryland) Public Library's roll-out of over 200 public-use PCs, which used to run on Windows and now run on a custom Linux distribution called Lumix."

SeanAhern writes "A number of years ago, Forgent acquired a patent on some of the algorithms required for JPEG compression and decompression, and recently sued 31 big-name IHVs and ISVs. A Newsforge article gets into some of the details and asks whether open source tools like the Gimp could be liable as well. To add fuel to the fire, the Joint Photographic Experts Group's committee thinks that some of the patent may be invalid. The p2pnet.net story mentions that the FTC has some skepticism as well. We originally talked about this on Slashdot back in the summer of 2002."

Roblimo writes "A Baystar Capital spokesperson has finally admitted, directly and on the record to NewsForge reporter Chris Preimesberger, that they believe SCO's only viable asset is the potential proceeds of lawsuits against Linux users and vendors. 'We're looking for the best return we can, and we think the focus should be on IP licensing (and enforcement),' said BayStar spokesman Bob McGrath."